Bike Reviews

I’d always been a reluctant bike commuter because of the bag-shaped sweat stain that inevitably forms on the back of my shirt. But during last winter, when heavy jackets led to drenched dress shirts, I finally wised up and installed this Blackburn rack on my commuter bike. Literally taking a weight off my back, the rack held my Arkel pannier packed with my laptop, lunch, and other office essentials and let me bike across town with a smile on my face and no sweat marks anywhere.

The EX-1 Disc, designed to work with the limitations of disc-brake frames, mounts to the rear dropout. You swap the bike’s original skewer with the rack’s extra-long version and tighten the rack to the dropout. The top of the rack connects to traditional seatstay rack mounts. I used this rack on two bikes. Although the first had no mounts, I was able to successfully secure it with a Sunlite seatpost-clamp rack mount ($12). Mounting the rack to the second bike required bending the mount struts slightly to accommodate the bike’s wider-than-usual seatstays.

The rack weighs a reasonable 535 grams and Blackburn says it has a 40-pound carrying capacity, which has proven more than sturdy enough for my grocery runs and office commutes.—Matt Allyn